The Brazilian air force said that debris picked up Thursday near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane.

“It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane,” Brig. Ramon Borges Cardoso told reporters in Recife, Brazil, about the material recovered Thursday. “It is a pallet of wood that is utilized for transport. It is used in planes, but on this flight to Paris, there was no wooden pallet.”

He added that oil slicks seen on the ocean were not from the plane either and that the quantity of oil exceeded the amount the plane would have carried.

“No material from the airplane was picked up,” he said.

The announcement left open the question of whether other debris that had not yet been plucked from the ocean might be from the plane.

On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered comes from the missing plane.

Investigators have not determined what caused the plane to crash Monday. The flight data recorders have not been recovered, and the plane’s crew did not send any messages indicating problems before the plane disappeared.

The aircraft’s computer system, however, relayed about four minutes of automated messages indicating a loss of cabin pressure and an electrical failure, officials have said.

Foul play has not been ruled out.

A Spanish pilot reported seeing an “intense flash” in the locale where Flight 447 went down Monday, the Spanish carrier Air Comet told CNN on Thursday, confirming a report in the Spanish daily El Mundo.

The co-pilot and a passenger on the flight between Lima, Peru, and Lisbon, Portugal, also said they saw a light.

“Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,” the unidentified captain wrote to his airline.

Air Comet said a written copy of the pilot’s report has been sent to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority.

(Source: CNN / YWN-112)